BYU professor receives rare distinction for second time

He made it onto 2016’s list and now the 2017 list.

Michael Scott, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, has once again received the distinction of being named a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher for 2017. The purpose of the Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers List is to identify authors whose research has significantly influenced others in their field. The list names nearly 3,000 scientists from around the world whose published papers are among the top one percent most referenced in their field over the previous 10 years. This year, Scott is one of only 58 researchers in computer science fields in the United States to receive this honor and the only BYU recipient. Read more about the rankings methodology here. 

What makes Scott unique in this achievement is that he has only been a professor for five years, yet he has already received this distinction twice. According to Google Scholar, he now has seven articles that have received over 200 citations and 13 other articles with over 100 citations.

“To make this list at all is a great honor,” Scott said. “To now be honored on multiple occasions speaks to the tremendous mentors, colleagues, and students I’ve had the opportunity of working with over the years and the unique opportunity to work on impactful research projects.”

Scott has MS and BS degrees from BYU in civil engineering. He received an additional MS degree from the University of Texas at Austin for computational and applied mathematics and a PhD from the same university in computational science, engineering, and mathematics.